Parallel Forking is a feature in SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) that allows a user to be called simultaneously on several SIP-enabled devices. For example, parallel forking may involve simultaneous ringing where a communications network rings all of the communication devices associated with a user, i.e., a user's work, home, cell and any other device associated with the user, at the same time. Accordingly, parallel forking forwards copies of a request to initiate communication to multiple destinations simultaneously.
However, in order to implement parallel forking, each of the communication devices are assigned the same AOR (Address of Record). While sharing the same AOR across multiple devices allows for valuable services like parallel forking, a problem arises related to feature control. Namely, with present approaches there is no way to grant one device control of features compared to the control the other devices are granted. Such features may include the ability to send a call directly to voicemail, or even call forwarding. This is problematic because the end user can only be in one location at a time, even though the user may be logged into multiple devices simultaneously, each device located in different physical areas. The consequence is that an unauthorized user could answer or initiate a call using an endpoint that is logged into by another user and access any of the features normally granted only to the original user.